Caoimhghín Ó Caoláin (Cavan-Monaghan, Sinn Fein) | Oireachtas source

There is no difference between them whatsoever.

This Government’s idea of universal health care is to give out GP-only cards with one hand and take back full medical cards with the other. Under the mysterious heading of "Medical Card Probity”, the Minister for Health, Deputy Reilly, and Minister of State Deputy Alex White have targeted a massive so-called saving of €113 million. When questioned at their press conference about this yesterday the two were unable to account for this figure. Where did it come from? How was it calculated? Nobody has been able to answer those very straight questions. The Minister of State suggested most of it would come from the cancellation or non-renewal of inappropriately held medical cards, but there is no evidence to support this. Therefore, we do not know where the figure came from, but we can safely assume it was cooked up to provide a sizeable chunk of the reduction in the health budget for 2014, at least €666 million.

The Minister for Health, Deputy Reilly, who in opposition raised the roof of this Chamber in protest at former Minister Mary Harney’s imposition of prescription charges for medical card holders, has now raised those charges again.

His increase this year amounts to a fivefold increase in Mary Harney's charge, to which he was so vehemently opposed, from 50 cent per item to €2.50 per item. For the second year in a row, he has substantially lowered the income threshold for the over 70s to receive a medical card. When the Fianna Fáil-Green Party Government introduced the current over 70s medical card scheme, based on an income limit, he said it was a "desperate climb-down" and that "tinkering with income limits is nowhere near good enough." What a change.

The Minister championed Fine Gael's fair care health policy, with its promise of universal primary care. Fine Gael and the Labour Party achieved their record mandate in the general election of 2011 on the basis of manifestos which promised to greatly extend and make universal entitlements to free primary care. In the Fine Gael-Labour Party programme for Government we were told universal free primary care would remove fees for GP care and be introduced within the Government's term of office. Of course, we were also told at the time:

Access to primary care without fees will be extended in the first year to claimants of free drugs under the Long-Term Illness Scheme at a cost of €17 million. Access to primary care without fees will be extended in the second year to claimants of free drugs under the High-Tech Drugs Scheme at a cost of €15 million. Access to subsidised care will be extended to all in the next phase. Access to care without fees will be extended to all in the final phase.

That is a quotation from the agreed programme for Government. The Minister promised that the first phase, namely, the extension of free primary care to claimants of free drugs under the long-term illness scheme, would be in place in the summer of 2012. It was not and is still not in place. Supposedly, there were drafting difficulties because of the change from entitlement based on income to entitlement based on forms of illness. In the autumn of last year we were told by the Minister that it was still on track and that there would be a Bill, but now, clearly, the direction has switched once more and there is still no clear road ahead to universal access.

Time and again, in opposition, the Minister rightly pointed out that restricting access to primary care was penny wise and pound foolish because older people would suffer poorer health outcomes and require more hospital visits, in-patient care and residential nursing home care, yet now, in the very same manner as his Fianna Fáil predecessors, he brings forward further restrictions to medical card access, a so-called savings measure that will adversely affect the health of older citizens. That is an indisputable fact.

We know that the HSE has been tightening up in the issuing of discretionary medical cards. This issue was debated in the Dáil last week and every Deputy has experience from his or her constituency of the reality of these restrictions. With the further €113 million cut targeted at medical card spending under the so-called "probity" heading, it is safe to say that in 2014 discretionary medical cards will become as rare as hen's teeth.

The Government's claimed commitment to transforming mental health services under A Vision for Change is belied by its allocation of a meagre €20 million in 2014, down from €35 million in 2013. The Oireachtas all-party mental health group, of which I am proud to be a member, working alongside party colleagues of the Taoiseach and the Tánaiste and working well on this very important issue, called unanimously for an allocation of €35 million in 2014 and for this figure to be ring-fenced after the poaching of the additional mental health budget in 2012. Frankly, the Minister of State, Deputy Kathleen Lynch, has failed to deliver once again in this area.

We heard the usual waffle yesterday about reform from the three Ministers at the Department of Health, but they have still not published their long-promised White Paper on the financing of universal health insurance. Where stands that promise? Instead we have the same piecemeal approach to our inequitable two-tier health system and the now perennial cuts to the health budget, again damaging hard-pressed public health services. In the weeks ahead we will see the full extent of these cuts as the HSE service plan for 2014 is put together.

The Government's cut of at least €660 million to the health budget in 2014 will leave huge gaps in services on top of the billions more cut from the health budget in recent years. Rather than make the wealthy pay their fair share to fund better access to health care and other social services, the Government robs pensioners, unemployed young people and a huge swathe of people on low incomes. Those over 70 years who have been affected by medical card cuts will also be among the pensioners losing out with the abolition of the free telephone allowance. This is not a small measure. No Government that claims to be serious about tackling the isolation of many older citizens, especially in rural areas, and that claims to want to support older people in their own homes would have imposed such a cut. It was a shameful measure to include in the budget. This petty-minded measure, for that is what it is, will, I fear, have serious consequences for some older and more vulnerable citizens. This will be shown in time.

This budget also is unquestionably anti-young people. The further cut to jobseeker's allowance and supplementary welfare allowance for 18 to 25 year olds is a disgrace. It gives the lie to the Government's claim that core social welfare rates have been protected. They have not and no such thing has happened. A cut from €144 per week to €100 per week for under 25s and from €188 to €144 for those aged 25 can only be described as savage. There is no other word to describe it. When Fianna Fáil first cut the jobseeker's allowance rate for the under 25s in the budget of 2010 the Labour Party, rightly, opposed the cut and called it for what it was. Back then it stated, "It is abundantly clear that the real purpose of these reforms is to promote emigration". It rightly accused the Government of hypocrisy for using the brain drain excuse not to tax high earners, while cutting back for those under 25 years. That is what the record shows. Now the Labour Party and Fine Gael are kicking young people in the teeth once again and this time they are kicking them even harder, giving them the choice of suffering even more hardship and poverty at home or taking the boat or aeroplane.

The social welfare cuts do not, however, stop there. The Government is cutting social insurance benefits, including maternity benefit, illness benefit, invalidity pension and the bereavement grant, with a view to saving €74 million. These are people's hard earned benefits. I must emphasis the fact that they have contributed towards these funds in order to protect themselves in situations that could arise in their lifetime. In the context of entitlement to the bereavement grant, they have contributed towards something that is inevitable for us all. The Government did not have to do this. These cuts were entirely avoidable. The Government could have shored up the social insurance fund with a small increase in contributions from those employers who could afford to pay more. Sinn Féin's proposal to introduce a new employer's rate of PRSI of 15.75% on wages in excess of €100,000 would raise €119.1 million. By cutting maternity benefit and abolishing the bereavement grant the Government is picking people's pockets from the cradle to the grave. The latest cut to maternity benefit comes on the back of an already reduced benefit from July this year when it was subjected to tax.

The bereavement grant is a small assistance towards the cost of funerals for workers with a solid contributions record. The cut to invalidity pension means 65 year old disabled pensioners are looking at a cut of €36.80 per week. Has the Taoiseach even considered this impact or is he ignoring it?

The Government continues to insist it has protected core weekly payments. As I have demonstrated, this is simply not true. The Government talks about “discontinuing rates and introducing new rates’”. By any standard of English usage, how can one say that is not a rate cut? The language may be played about with but the net effect is exactly the same.

Mortgage interest supplement is being abolished in the absence of effective action to tackle the mortgage arrears crisis. The contribution of rent supplement recipients is being hiked with no sign of the long promised housing assistance payment. Once again the Minister responsible makes lazy and mean cuts instead of reforming the system. Rent supplement will remain the long acknowledged poverty trap it has come to be. The rent supplement changes will only make the housing crisis worse for people dependent on this payment. All Members know of people being squeezed between increasing rents and rent supplement restrictions. That is a reality for so many ordinary citizens. How can the Government ignore their circumstances?

In another prime example of spin, the Minister for Public Expenditure and Reform, Deputy Howlin, announced what he claimed a €30 million allocation for recommencing the development of social and affordable housing. What he did not tell us was that the local authority housing budget is being cut from €55.336 million in 2013 to €40 million in 2014. He did not tell us that voluntary and co-operative housing is cut from €55.5 million in 2013 to €40.92 million in 2014. He also held back on the news that regeneration and private housing grants are cut as well. Housing has been cut by €1 billion in the past five years. There are 112,000 people on housing waiting lists and homelessness is at an all-time high, especially in the capital.

Into this ocean of housing need, the two Ministers, Deputies Howlin and Hogan, drop their pathetic little promise of 500 social housing units. It will not even look at the problem. The overall 10% cut to housing in budget 2014 represents €58 million. These moneys are desperately needed not just to build new homes but to maintain social housing already in place. Instead of providing actual housing, the Government restates stale promises of housing yet undelivered while moving funding around to cover up its cuts. The massive shortage in affordable, appropriate housing will not be solved with empty rhetoric or headline grabbing gimmicks which do nothing for the people who are suffering in overcrowded, unsafe and insecure housing – or no housing at all - every day.

Like the Minister for the Environment, Community and Local Government, Deputy Hogan last weekend, the Minister for Public Expenditure and Reform, Deputy Howlin in his budget speech, had the gall to claim credit for what we hope will be the final resolution of the Priory Hall scandal. Neither he nor Deputy Hogan admitted that the resolution process now arrived at could have been put in place by the Government two years ago when the residents were evacuated. It took the tragic death of one of the residents, a television interview with his grieving partner and her direct appeal to the Taoiseach to finally shame the intransigent Minister, Deputy Hogan, and the intransigent banks into doing what they should have done in the first place. It is also a perfect illustration of how the banks can be confronted and forced to back down if the political will is there, something the Taoiseach should have demonstrated a long time ago. Of course the political will to confront the banks as well as the other privileged sections of society is not present in the Government. Budget 2014 is a further illustration of that.

We are repeatedly told by this coalition that jobs are the number one priority. We have endless spin from the Government about job creation. However, the reality is that the Government has cut both the current and capital budget of the Department of Jobs, Enterprise and Innovation by €28.5 million. A recent report into Enterprise Ireland found the staff had been cut so far as to undermine the ability of the body to fully achieve its objectives. We have the ludicrous position of the Minister for Jobs, Enterprise and Innovation claiming this is a pro-jobs and pro-enterprise budget yet failing to acknowledge that his own budget has been cut and the key agency for indigenous companies, Enterprise Ireland, is under severe stress.

We hear much of activation measures to encourage people into work. What then are we to make of the decision that when people with a medical card return to work they will not retain the full medical card for up to three years as heretofore but will receive the GP-only card instead? This is supposed to yield a paltry saving of €11 million but at what cost in terms of helping people out of poverty and into jobs? The loss of a medical card is significant, particularly if the person affected has dependent children. The GP-only card will make no difference. This is a poorly considered proposal and is beyond my comprehension. The measure is a contradiction of the Government’s stated position of encouraging and facilitating people moving out of unemployment into work. It simply does not stack up.

Another anti-young people measure is the decision to cut the €20 per week bonus for people who have been out of work for more than a year and who enrol in FÁS, VTOS, vocational training opportunities scheme, and Youthreach courses. Young people are hit again as the student contribution fee will rise by €250 to €2,750 next year and then to €3,000 the following year while apprentices will now be required to make a student contribution.

Ag am nuair ba chóir go mbeifí ag infheistiú breis airgid maidir le cruthú fostaíochta sa Ghaeltacht, tá gearradh siar eile déanta ar chistí Údarás na Gaeltachta chuige sin. Tá an maoiniú atá ag an údarás le fostaíocht a chruthú gearrtha le roinnt blianta anuas, ó €26 milliún go dtí €5.8 milliún i mbliana. De réir tuairisc Indecon tamall siar, theastaigh ar a laghad €12 milliún in aghaidh na bliana leis na jabanna atá ann a chaomhnú, gan trácht ar jabanna nua a chruthú. Tá €1.3 milliún le gearradh ó na heagrais Ghaeilge agus na scéimeanna a riarann siad, chomh maith le €2.1 milliún gearrtha ó na heagrais Thuaidh-Theas freisin. Is maith an rud go bhfuil €500,000 curtha i leataobh don straitéis 20 bliain. Le ciorrú ginearálta de 5% sa Roinn, cé as a dtarraingeofar an t-airgead sin agus cé bheidh thíos leis?

Ba mhór an náire don Rialtas é nár cuireadh leagan Gaeilge de na cáipéisí buiséid ar fáil ag an am céanna leis na cinn i mBéarla agus freisin gur dhiúltaigh Páirtí an Lucht Oibre urlabhraí le Gaeilge a chur ar fáil ar chlár anailíse Raidió na Gaeltachta ar an gcáinaisnéis. Is léíriú eile é seo ar an drochmheas atá ag an Rialtas seo ar an nGaeilge agus ar an bpobal a labhrann í.

The Minister for Public Expenditure and Reform, Deputy Howlin, invoked what he called “the Famine victims of old” who had to seek aid overseas. This was in his effort to excuse the Labour Party for its shameful role in continuing the failed and futile austerity regime begun by Fianna Fáil and continued by this Government over its three-budget rule so far. If he must cite the Great Hunger, let the Minister and his colleagues remember this: millions in this country were sacrificed on the altar of a doctrine called laissez-fairecapitalism, which dictated that nothing must be done to interfere with the almighty market, even at the cost of mass starvation. The same mentality lies behind the austerity regimes that have increased poverty and unemployment and deepened social divisions not only in Ireland but across Europe and the world. This philosophy demands that bondholders, banks, multinational corporations and the super-rich must be protected, whatever the cost to the mass of the people. That is what the Labour Party signed up to when it went into government with Fine Gael. That is what austerity means and that is what they have given us in three consecutive budgets.

The Labour Party has long abandoned the principles it once claimed to hold and that it claimed to honour in this centenary year of the great Lock-out: solidarity, social justice and the belief that "an injury to one is the concern of all." The Ministers, Deputies Noonan and Howlin, spoke much about exiting the bailout. There is an exit sign over this budget but, sadly, it is the exit sign I have mentioned previously in this contribution, the exit sign to the airport and sea ports, and emigration for tens of thousands of our young people continuing through this and next year.

The Minister, Deputy Noonan, spoke about reinforcing policies that cause the economy to grow. The opposite is the case. The Government is reinforcing policies that have paralysed the Irish economy. Ask the 415,000 people on the live register, the 300,000 people who have emigrated in the past four years, the 180,000 households in mortgage distress, the 110,000 people on the housing waiting lists, the full-time workers whose jobs have been lost and the part-time workers on low pay and punitive contracts.

I deny in the strongest terms the contention of the Labour Party and Fine Gael Ministers in this Government that there was no other way. Nobody is buying that mantra. There is another way, a fairer way, which some of them have recognised and privately acknowledge. There is a fairer way to address the budget deficit, protect the vulnerable, give back to those who have suffered pain, stimulate the economy and foster job creation. This was set out in costed detail in Sinn Féin's alternative budget, the only real alternative budget produced by any party in the Oireachtas. Sinn Féin will continue to advocate fearlessly for fairness, stand shoulder to shoulder with those who are suffering under austerity and build a political force across this land that will sweep aside the Government's austerity regime and bring about genuine democratic change and a truly new republic at the earliest possible date.

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